For jobseekers4 min read
What employers actually check, and how to make it easy for them
Hiring teams are moving from reading CVs to checking claims. That is good news if you can do the work, and it changes what a strong application looks like.
For jobseekers4 min read
Hiring teams are moving from reading CVs to checking claims. That is good news if you can do the work, and it changes what a strong application looks like.
Make your next application easy to say yes to.
Free for jobseekers, always.
Match your application to the role’s must-haves, in the role’s own words.
Prepare three specific stories. Most interview questions are asking for one of them.
If you have applied for many roles, you know the feeling of sending a carefully written CV into silence. Part of the reason is volume: some roles draw hundreds of applicants. Part of it is that a CV is hard to trust, and employers know it.
More hiring teams are responding by checking rather than reading: short tests, work samples, interviews with the same questions for everyone. If you can do the work, this is the best change in hiring for years. Here is how to make the most of it.
Employers skim for claims they can verify. A line that describes a duty is easy to write and impossible to check. A line that names what you did, with what, and what changed gives the reader something to hold on to, and something to ask you about.
Hard to check
Easy to check
Try it
Rewrite this CV line so an employer could check it: “Responsible for managing the company’s social media presence.”
Only use numbers you could explain in an interview. A modest figure you can talk about for two minutes is worth more than an impressive one you cannot.
The strongest thing in any application is a link to real work. For a designer, a portfolio. For a developer, a repository you wrote yourself. For a writer, published pieces. For an accountant or an operations person, a short write-up of a problem you solved, with any confidential details removed.
Most job descriptions list a handful of must-haves. Your application should make it obvious, within ten seconds, that you meet each one. Use the same words the posting uses where they are true for you. If the role asks for “month-end close”, do not make the reader translate “financial reporting cycles”.
This is not about gaming a system. It is about making a tired reader’s job easy. If you do not meet a must-have, it is usually better to say so plainly and show the nearest thing you have done than to hope nobody notices.
Well-run interviews ask for specific examples: a time something went wrong, a time you disagreed with someone, a piece of work you are proud of. Prepare three real stories in advance, each with the same shape.
The situation
One or two sentences. When, where, what was at stake.
What you did
Your part specifically, not the team’s. This is the part interviewers are listening for.
What changed
The result, and what you would do differently now.
Most questions can be answered with one of your three stories, adjusted. You will sound prepared because you are, and you will be giving the interviewer exactly the kind of evidence a structured interview is designed to mark.
A skills test is where someone without a famous employer or a perfect CV can beat someone with both. Take it somewhere quiet, read what it measures before you start, and use any practice question you are offered. If something breaks, a power cut or a dropped connection, tell the employer straight away. Reasonable employers make allowances, and they can only do that if they know.
A test is the one part of hiring where the document stops mattering and the work starts.
Up next
A CV is a claim. Hire on the evidence.
A CV is the candidate’s case for themselves, written by the candidate. Read it as a list of things to check, and the rest of your process gets easier.
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